Minecraft continues to grow in scope every year. One of its most impactful expansions, the Caves and Cliffs update, was announced during Minecraft Live 2020. As the name suggests, this update was built on sweeping changes to world generation in the over 10-year-old sandbox game; from more impressive mountains that can stretch higher to a variety of new cave formations underground. However, in April 2021 Mojang announced it would be splitting the update into two parts due to the ambitious nature of its contents.
Caves and Cliffs part 1 launched on June 8, 2021, focusing primarily on new materials for players to work with like copper, as well as new mobs like goats, axolotl, and glow squid. The latter, originally from Mojang's now-shuttered mobile AR game Minecraft Earth, was the winner of a player-driven Mob Vote during Minecraft Live 2020. Part 2 finally released today alongside a cute animated trailer detailing some of major additions that give Minecraft fans a lot to dive into.
How Caves and Cliffs Part 2 Changes Minecraft
The first new feature of Caves and Cliffs part 2 discussed by Minecraft's patch notes is an expansion to overworld height and depth - adding 50 percent more vertical space "to explore and build in." This change doesn't only affect new worlds generated following the version update; every existing world can be upgraded to "blend" new features in. Mojang is handling the discrepency by turning the originally unbreakable bedrock layer into a new material called Deepslate, with new cave generations occuring underneath that.
New terrain is being implemented to coincide the changes to world height and depth. For example, Minecraft's mountains can now reach a maximum height of 256 blocks, and biomes aren't always going to determine the local terrain shape or elevation. Mojang says this will result in new, unique biome placements such as deserts appearing at the top of hills.
Two additional biomes can now be found both above and underground: Jagged Peaks and Meadows, as well as Lush Caves and Dripstone Caves, respectively. Cave generation is also being tuned overall, with specific cave biomes able to appear directly underneath the surface and three types of noise caves also being discoverable. These are "Cheese Caves," which are large and open; "Spaghetti Caves" which are wide and tunnel downward; and "Noodle Caves," which are narrow and winding. Aquifers are another new feature in caves, leading to bodies of water such as flooded caves and underground lakes.
Changes to caves also come with a few extra adjustments. Larger ore veins can now be discovered in cave systems, and the distribution of ore throughout a world has been adjusted to compensate for the new height and depth caps. Monsters are also only guaranteed to spawn in "complete darkness," making it easier for players to defend themselves. However, the darkness-sensing Glare lost Minecraft Live 2021's Mob Vote in favor of the Allay, so at the moment players will have to gauge darkness levels for themselves.
New music and achievements are also available with Caves and Cliffs part 2, and "Old" world types are no longer available from the world creation screen. Beyond that fans of Minecraft can expect a bevy of bug and stability fixes as one would expect from any update, but there's also an interesting addition to the "Vanilla Experiements" toggle. By turning this option on, players can get a sneak peak at new content coming in 2022's The Wild Update, such as Sculk blocks that were originally revealed alongside Caves and Cliffs. However, the archaeology features also announced with Caves and Cliffs has no official release plan known to the public.
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